


Something Right

by downlookingup



Series: Walk on Shells [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Flashback, Fluff and Angst, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-07 20:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1912263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downlookingup/pseuds/downlookingup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One year ago. Jaime and Brienne spend a Saturday afternoon watching a play in the park. Jaime arrives at a startling conclusion.</p><p>The song for this one is "This is The Life" by Two Door Cinema Club, a predictably upbeat song for a summer's day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Right

Jaime would have known it was her by the quiet and patient way she tapped on the door, even if Pia hadn't announced her seconds before. No matter how many times he told her she didn't need to stand outside, Brienne insisted on waiting until he called her in.

"You don't have to knock, Grizzly." He said the same thing every time, and every time she opened the door and rolled her eyes at him.

"My father taught me to be polite," she said, sitting down on the chair in front of his desk.

"You've called me every name under the sun. I think we're beyond politeness."

"I'm not here to discuss the finer points of etiquette." She gave him a small smile he very rarely saw and he knew she was about to say something terribly amusing. "I was wondering, did they teach you history at your fancy prep school or were they just out to steal your father's money?" Brienne shook a sheath of marked-up papers at him to make her point.

Jaime grinned. A year and a half ago, she wouldn't have dared either tease him or speak kindly to him. She would have grumbled cutting jabs, accused him of being dishonest and unprofessional and unethical, and threatened to have him fired. He had thought she was the glummest, most humorless person he knew, and then she had proved him wrong. Her wit was just as sharp as his when she wanted it to be. "Of course they did," he said. "You should be asking if I was _awake_ during any of it."

Brienne shook her head with a small, disapproving smile on her broad mouth. "Of course you weren't." She tossed the papers on his desk and crossed her arms, waiting for his reaction. It was the article he had written about how the new prime minister claimed his policies were influenced by the ancient Targaryen kings. He had finished it a week ago and promptly sent it down to Research for fact-checking. "Jaeherys the First was the one who build the Kingsroad, not Viserys the First."

"A slip of the pen," he said, with a shrug, flipping through the article. It was the only correction of any substance in the whole article, carefully pointed out in green ink in Brienne's neat handwriting. "Did you come all the way up here just to personally humiliate me about mixing up two-thousand-year-old kings?"

She flushed slightly and looked away. "No. I came to see if you wanted to brush up on your history." She pulled out a piece of paper from her blazer pocket and smoothed it out in front of him. I was a creased flyer announcing a performance of _Dragons, Wyrms and Wyverns_ in Naerys's Park that following Saturday. The photo showed three knights, a lady and two children in dragon costumes, and they all wore the most ridiculous looks on their garishly painted faces.

Jaime cocked an eyebrow at her. "Miss Tarth, are you asking me out on a date?"

"W–what? No!" Brienne turned an astonishing shade of red, which only served to highlight how blue her eyes were and how brown her freckles were, and Jaime couldn't keep a smile from breaking out in his face. "Margaery's going to be in Highgarden all weekend and I don't want to go alone."

"So, I'm your _second_ choice?"

"Forget it," she said, leaning over to take the flyer from his hands. "You don't have to go if you don't want to."

Jaime held the paper away from her reach and huffed. Sometimes she just couldn't take a joke. "No, I want to. Relax, Grizzly." She gave him a steely glare and straightened up. "I'm surprised, though. I didn't peg you for a fan of comedy. Maybe swashbuckling stories like _Dragonkin_ or some sappy romance like _The Merchant's Daughter_. But bumbling knights?" He tapped the paper against his knuckles and shook his head in mock disbelief.

She pursed her lips in her trademark show of annoyance. It was a gesture reserved for him. "It has some very interesting themes on gender roles. I studied it at university."

Jaime smirked. "Of course you did."

 

* * *

 

There were so many people in the park, he might have missed her had she not been the only six-foot-three woman with light blonde hair in the crowd. Brienne was rooted to her spot, standing on a plaid red blanket in her bare feet and gazing off in the other direction, probably trying to pick him out of the multitude. Jaime snuck up behind her and pinched her elbow under the sleeve of her white t-shirt. She whipped around, fists raised, and let out a soft sigh of relief when she recognized him. 

"You're here," she breathed, almost surprised.

"I am," he said, with a smile. "Did you think I was going to stand you up?"

She shook her head, her lips curling up slightly. "Of course not."

_Oh, you did_ , Jaime realized with a pang, and he found himself wondering if she had been stood up before. He imagined a sixteen-year-old version of Brienne, slightly smaller, more gawky but just as ugly, waiting on the porch for a boy who never came. He wanted to assure her he would never do that to her, but she had already kneeled on the grass to show him the things she'd brought.

"I hope it's not too much," she was saying. "And the website said blankets were encouraged because chairs might bother the people behind us. Since we're tall enough, I didn't think we needed them. Shoes." Jaime stared at her blankly and frowned.

Brienne rolled her eyes and pointed at his feet. "Take. Off. Your. Shoes."

Jaime hadn't realized he was standing on the edge of the blanket, and that somehow he had stepped in some mud and was staining the red fabric. With a sheepish grin, he toed his sneakers off and dropped down on the blanket next to her, leaning back on his elbows. "Did you bring food?" He patted his stomach. "I'm starving."

Brienne gaped at him like he'd grown a second head. "Didn't you hear me? That's what I was saying. I brought a bunch of food and I hope it's not too much." There was square orange cooler on the blanket next to her, like the type parents take to little league baseball games. She lifted the lid and tilted it towards him. Inside were two sandwiches, three apples, a pack of cheese puffs and a six-pack of beer. Neon-blue ice packs kept the food cold. 

"Seven hells, Grizzly," he beamed. "You've outdone yourself."

She gave him a shy smile in return and blushed a little bit, but he knew she was pleased and he was too. His only other prospect for a lazy Saturday was to lie on his couch, watch Casterly United give some poor team a beating, and try hard not to think about Cersei, but he was increasingly confident that he'd made the right decision by coming here. Jaime was struck suddenly by the thought that no one had ever invited him to an afternoon of chaste entertainment without having an ulterior motive. For his sister, it had been sex. For everyone else, it was closing a deal or making a business connection. For Brienne, it was just enjoying his company. It filled him with an unfamiliar swell of fondness for her, this towering, shy and homely young woman he had once hated fervently. 

"Thank you for inviting me, Brienne," he said, as earnestly as he could. He hoped she could see he meant it completely.

"Thank you for coming," she muttered, flashing him a brief smile and setting to her task of opening two beers and laying out two sandwiches.

Lute and flute music coming from hidden speakers announced the beginning of the play. Up on the stage, two armored knights emerged from a cheery-looking forest and began arguing the differences between dragons, wyrms and wyverns in lofty poetic tones. Brienne was absolutely enthralled, leaning forward to lean her elbows on her knees, a silly grin on her face. 

Jaime took the opportunity to watch her unobserved. Her hair was growing long again and beginning to brush her shoulders. She would complain about how long it was for months, but never do anything about it until the day she got mad at the way it would get in her eyes and then she’d hurry to a salon and cut it short again, only to have the cycle repeat. Currently it was fluttering in the soft breeze around her face, catching the light of the sun and looking nothing like the dull straw color he used to think it was all those months ago. Jaime wondered when he had started thinking of her as anything but the ugliest woman he knew.

There was no denying that her mouth was too broad and her teeth too prominent and her nose too wide and her freckles too numerous for her face to ever grace the cover of a magazine. She would never be a model, with her excessive height and wide swimmer's shoulders and flat chest, and she could not honestly be called beautiful. But instead of seeing her faults, he had begun noticing how amusing and endearing it was that, even when she kept her mouth closed, her blushes betrayed her emotions. He saw now the strength in the muscles of her back and how graceful and gentle her long fingers were. For one distracting moment, he imagined her hands gripping his shoulders as she lay underneath him, and the image made a surge of heat flood to his face and to his crotch. He unzipped the hoodie he was wearing so cool air could reach him and tried to think of something else.

Laughter rose up around them and Brienne laughed loudest, a gleeful, booming guffaw. She twisted in place to glance back at him, her bright blue eyes shining with merriment. _She does have the most astonishing eyes._ Jaime forced a laugh and turned his eyes back to the stage. A third knight had joined the other two, this one a woman, a fact obvious to everyone but the two men on stage. She confessed to the audience that she loved one of the knights, the tall, strapping, less foolish one, and she intended to pass herself off as a knight to be close to him as the two men set out on their quest to find the great dragons Seraxes and Melerion. 

A series of ludicrous misunderstandings ensued. The lady knight tried to hide her affection for the tall knight, the tall knight tried to understand his feelings for who he thought was a man, and the bumbling knight tried to catch the dragons, who were nothing more than children in costumes who mocked him and led him on a merry chase. Jaime tried to keep his attention on the play, and he had to admit it was actually quite funny, but his eyes kept straying to Brienne, to the curve of her back and the smooth length of her neck and the thickness of her lips when she laughed. 

_Gods, get a grip, Lannister_. Jaime sat up straight, emptied his beer in a couple of gulps and reached into the cooler to get another one. Brienne shot a disapproving look at him, but looked away immediately. Clearly watching the play was more appealing than berating him for drinking too fast. 

The lady knight had somehow rescued a maiden and now the four of them traveled through the forest searching for the fake dragons and trying to free themselves from a complicated web of romantic entanglements. The maiden loved the lady knight, the lady knight loved the tall knight, the tall knight loved both of them and the bumbling knight did not seem to realize the dragons weren't real. Behind the stage, the steel and glass skyscrapers of King's Landing rose like sharp silver fangs, but instead of reflecting the clear summer sky from earlier, they reflected heavy grey clouds, which were quickly creeping towards the park.

"I think it's going to rain," he said, craning his neck back towards the east. He tugged the hood of his jacket up, as if that could keep him from getting wet.

Brienne turned around and narrowed her eyes at the sky. "I hope not," she said, and no sooner were the words out of her mouth, that a wave of startled cries moved up from the back of the crowd as the clouds broke and began drenching everyone.

They leapt to their feet in unison, rushing to put their shoes on and pick up their things. Jaime grabbed the cooler, Brienne picked up the blanket and her bag, and they ran. The audience was scattered to the four winds, fleeing in every direction, and the mummers had hurried offstage and huddled under a tent beside the platform. Brienne tugged at his sleeve and pointed at a bridge over one of the paths and they sped towards it. Two dozen other people had had the same idea, so they stood pressed against the grimy wall, their heads bent down so they wouldn't hit the ceiling.

"You should have checked the weather forecast before you invited me, Grizzly,” Jaime said, shaking the excess water out of his hair.

"I did! It said thirty percent chance of rain, but it always says that."

Brienne pushed her wet hair out of her eyes and watched the rain fall outside their shelter. The heaving motion of her chest as she tried to catch her breath drew Jaime's eye and his heart jolted in his chest. The white shirt was completely soaked through and he saw clearly the millions of tiny freckles dotting her chest and stomach. She was wearing a thin white bra, her pink areolae were slightly visible, and her nipples strained against the fabric and he wondered what they would feel like in his mouth.

The notion that he desired her made his stomach turn with fear. He had never been with anyone but Cersei and had never really wanted to. Of course, he'd felt attracted to other women throughout the years, but he'd never wanted them in that way, not like he'd wanted and had Cersei. But Cersei had been gone for years, longer than he'd known Brienne. She'd left him for a job and would probably never come back, and Jaime knew he should have tried to move on like Tyrion said, but he'd never wanted anyone else. _Now I do._

"Jaime?" His eyes darted up to meet hers and he found himself blushing like a teenage boy. She eyed him questioningly, and when she looked down and saw what he had been staring at, she turned beet red, all the way down to her shoulders, and crossed her arms over her chest. "Damn."

"Here," Jaime said. He shrugged out of his hoodie and handed it to her, avoiding looking at her too directly. She would hate it if he did that.

Brienne took the jacket and pulled it on without a word. It was too small on her broad shoulders, but it zipped up far enough to cover her breasts. She shoved her hands inside the pockets and leaned back against the wall, staring at her shoes. Her shoulders were hunched in on themselves, as if she could will herself out of existence, and the blush on her face was a bright red beacon, calling him.

_Would she push me away if I kissed her?_ Maybe not. She looked at him sometimes, and he pretended not to notice but he did. She might kiss him back and run those long fingers of hers through his hair and maybe he'd forget about Cersei and drown in Brienne and her clear blue depths. It felt right.

He lifted his hand to take hers but she stepped away suddenly and he only touched mossy stone. The rain had stopped. "Come on," she said, "let's make a run for the station before it starts up again." She plodded up the path before he could protest and he followed grudgingly, her cooler tapping against his thigh with every step.

When they reached the Street of Silk station, they stopped at the bottom of the stairs. He was going left, to Platform B which would take him to Aegon's Hill, and she was going right, to Platform A and to Flea Bottom. He put the cooler at her feet and she began to unzip his hoodie.

"No, keep it," he said.

Brienne met his eyes briefly and looked away just as quick. "I'll return it on Monday," she said, and he nodded, although he hoped she might keep it for good. Maybe she'd wear it to bed on a cold night and dream of him. The idea sent a thrill down his spine.

"I'll never find out the ending to that thrice-damned play," he said, and she smiled, with her crooked teeth and thick lips. He liked that smile.

"Ser Mathis realizes that Ser Rupert is really Lady Jayne, Lady Kira saves Ser Alyn from the evil dragon children, there are two weddings and they all live happily ever after."

He scoffed. "No wonder you like it. How can Lady Kira love an idiot who couldn't recognize children in costumes? And how can Ser Mathis forgive Lady Jayne for lying to him?"

Brienne chuckled. "The academic answer is that it's a metaphor about accepting people as they are, whether they cross-dress or chase foolish quests or kill their husbands to get out of abusive marriages."

"And what's the layman's answer?"

"True love can conquer anything."

_Not everything_ , he thought. _Not blood ties or social taboos or family expectations_. "Do you really believe that?"

"I don't know," she said, with a shrug and a blush. "I've never been in love."

Jaime wanted to kiss her again, but she was already moving, folding the blanket under her arm and picking up the cooler, and the moment was gone. "I had fun," he rushed to say.

"Me too." She paused and bit her lip, wanting to say something else. "Maybe we could come back next week, catch the ending?" Her eyes searched his out, watching for his reaction, maybe even afraid of what he'd say.

He smiled. "You already spoiled it for me, Grizzly, but I'd like to anyway.” Brienne grinned and waved goodbye and disappeared down the white-tiled tunnel. _Maybe next week_ , he thought, and walked to Platform B.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set roughly one year before the events of "I'm Praying for a Miracle". I was only going to make an offhand reference to this in "People are Fragile Things" but I couldn't stop thinking about it, and then I started mulling over the play and it all went downhill from there. I had such a great amount of fun writing this. If you look through the previous entries, you'll see why that second (first?) date never came to pass.
> 
> My version of _Dragons, Wyrms and Wyverns_ is quite an obvious mishmash of Cervantes' _Don Quixote_ and Shakespeare's _Twelfth Night_ , with some vague references to canon thrown in. The title is stolen from canon, as is _Dragonkin_ and _The Merchant's Daughter_. 
> 
> The show in the park is inspired by [Shakespeare in the Park](http://publictheater.org/en/programs--events/shakespeare-in-the-park/?SiteTheme=Shakespeare), which I have always wanted to attend. [Here are some photos from their staging of _Twelfth Night_ in 2009](http://www.playbill.com/article/photo-call-more-from-twelfth-night-starring-anne-hathaway-com-162176) and [a highlight reel of the Summer 2014 staging of _Much Ado About Nothing_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKgeGNpzvpo), starring Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater, and also featuring Pedro Pascal, who played Oberyn Martell on the show.


End file.
